E-Business
HP Top Cybersecurity Predictions for the Year
By HP Inc. Security Experts & Advisors
From ransomware pile-ons to increasingly commoditized supply chain TTPs, weaponized firmware exploits and targeted attacks on hybrid workers – the threat landscape is set to evolve at a worrying pace this year.
As 2021 drew to a close, our HP security experts and advisors reflected on what the year 2022 has in store. Here, we include insights from a range of HP security experts – including: Michael Heywood, Supply Chain Security Lead; Joanna Burkey, CISO; Dr. Ian Pratt, Global Head of Security for Personal Systems; Patrick Schläpfer, Malware Analyst; Alex Holland, Senior Malware Analyst; Julia Voo, Global Lead Cybersecurity and Tech Policy; and Michael Howard, Head of Security and Analytics Practice; alongside HP Security Advisory Board member and Partner at Deloitte, Robert Masse – identifying four key trends to look out for.
- Increasing commoditization of software supply chain attacks could result in more high-profile victims targeted
Supply chain attacks are likely to continue to present new opportunities for threat actors in 2022. According to Michael Heywood: “We’ll see supply chain attacks continue to rise in 2022 as threat actors search for weak links in software supply chains, targeting software being used widely and globally, or used by a specific company.”
As Joanna Burkey explains, this approach could create economies of scale for threat actors: “With the Kaseya breach – which impacted over 1,500 companies – we saw that supply chain attacks can be financially rewarding. This could lead to the continued commoditization of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used to conduct such attacks. This only adds fuel to the fire, giving threat actors more than enough motivation to exploit software supply chains this year.”
Ian Pratt says both SMBs and high-profile victims may be targeted: “Kaseya demonstrated a pathway to monetization for independent software vendor (ISV) breaches. This should be a wakeup call to all ISVs that even if their customer base doesn’t consist of enterprise and government customers, they can still be caught in the crosshairs of attackers looking to exploit their customers. Now that this blueprint is in place, we could see these types of attack become more widespread this year, targeting both SMBs and high-profile names.”
Some verticals are more likely to be targets of supply chain attacks than others, as Robert Masse explains: “Healthcare firms, as well as those in Energy and Resources (E&R), that use lots of different hardware and software from various vendors will be interesting targets for software supply chain attacks. Supply chain integrity will be vital in 2022, as attackers begin launching attacks quicker than organizations can invest in secure software development cycles.”
Organizations should also be aware of the threat posed by vulnerabilities in open-source software, as Patrick Schläpfer explains: “We’ll see an increase in open-source software packages containing malicious code. Attackers will proactively inject new threats into open-source libraries that feed into software supply chains. This could lead to more companies being compromised, regardless of whether they have a secure perimeter or good overall posture.”
- Ransomware gangs could put lives at risk and engage in ‘pile-ons’
Ransomware will continue to be a major risk this year, with victims potentially being hit more than once, as Burkey outlines: “What we’ll see will be akin to ‘social media pile-ons’, with ransomware victims repeatedly targeted by threat actors. Once an organization has been shown to be ‘soft’, others will pile-on to get their share of the action. In some instances, threat actors will hit a company multiple times in double or even triple dip extortion rackets.”
Extortion methods could also extend beyond the victim as ransomware gangs apply the pressure, comments Alex Holland: “Ransomware operators will almost certainly intensify the ways they pressure victims into paying their demands. Beyond data leak websites, attackers are using increasingly varied extortion methods, such as cold calling, and contacting customers and business associates of victim organizations.”
“Heywood highlights that ransomware gangs won’t just encrypt data, they will steal it too, turning the screws on victims: “As we have seen in 2021, threat actors will continue stealing data before encrypting devices, putting pressure on victims to pay ransoms to unencrypt systems, and prevent the release of data.”
Threat actors could also focus on specific verticals and use cases, as highlighted by Masse: “Attackers have noticed that hitting certain industries will produce a higher likelihood of payment. We could see more attacks on healthcare and E&R organizations.
“Threat actors may well target high risk devices, such as critical medical support systems and their supporting infrastructure, where the risk of significant harm will be highest and therefore a payout will come quickly. This has already started to happen in regions such as Canada, with surgeries being delayed due to ransomware attacks.”
The trend of cooperation between threat actors will continue this year too, as Pratt explains: “We’ve seen time and time again that threat actors are willing to cooperate on attacks. There is a vibrant cybercrime marketplace, empowering a criminal supply chain that enables even unsophisticated threat actors to obtain the tools and services needed to launch successful campaigns.
“Vendors may specialize in stealing credentials, creating exploits, writing email lures, or hosting backend services. The bottom line is that the availability of tools and expertise is enabling the sophistication of criminal attacks to rise.”
- Weaponization of firmware attacks will lower the bar for entry
Masse believes a lack of visibility and control over firmware security will exacerbate the issue: “Certain industries where these attacks could be more probable should start thinking about the risks posed by the weaponization of hardware-level malware and exploits.
“They are very difficult to detect even in the best-case scenario. Rogue processes and memory mapping bypasses will be hot topics in 2022, and we can also expect to see threat actors targeting CPUs, the BIOS and microcode as part of a revised kill-chain for ransomware attacks.”
Policy makers should take note of this trend and enforce change, according to Julia Voo: “The weaponization of hardware-level exploits means that policy makers must step in to develop standards that can help to improve firmware security. By working with industry through a bottom-up approach, policy makers can drive meaningful change in an area that has largely been overlooked.”
- Hybrid work and sporting events will create more opportunities to attack users
The distribution of teams within hybrid working models means identity management will continue to play a key role, as Burkey highlights: “Identity must be solid, verified and robust. Organizations need to make sure that every activity coming from an endpoint is authentic. Is it really the user conducting these activities? Are they who they say they are? Too many organizations think being behind a firewall is enough to keep an endpoint safe, but this isn’t true. In the era of hybrid work, identity management will never be more important.”
The shift to hybrid work will also continue to create problems for organizational security, says Michael Howard: “Every single employee remains a target for attackers, with the volume of unmanaged and unsecure devices creating a huge attack surface to defend.” Masse believes this could make it easier for attackers to go after high-profile staff: “Threat actors could start to target the homes and personal networks of top executives, even government officials, as these networks are easier to compromise than traditional enterprise environments.”
Phishing will remain an ever-present threat in the era of hybrid work, Pratt explains: “Employees have been using personal devices for work or corporate devices for personal tasks, like checking emails. This will continue, and it’s likely there will be an increase in phishing attacks targeting both corporate and personal email accounts. This essentially doubles attackers’ chances of launching a successful attack, so organizations need to educate the workforce on the risks of their behavior and enforce technical controls to prevent compromise.”
High-profile sporting events will also present new opportunities for attackers to target users, according to Schläpfer: “The Winter Olympics in Beijing and FIFA World Cup in Qatar give threat actors plenty of scope for exploitation. Such large events attract opportunistic attackers, be it a direct attack on organizers, sponsors, participants and fans, or as phishing lures for malware and ransomware campaigns targeted at users. Organizations and individuals alike need to be aware of the risks.”
A new approach to security is needed
“The rise of hybrid working and continued innovation from threat actors means 2022 has plenty of nasty surprises in store for enterprise security,” comments Ian Pratt. “As a result, we need to go about securing the future of work in an entirely different way. Organizations should embrace a new architectural approach to security that helps to mitigate risk and enable resilience.
“By applying the principles of Zero Trust – least privilege access, isolation, mandatory access control and strong identity management – organizations can drastically reduce the attack surface and secure the future of work.”
HP Wolf Security can help organizations defend against the plethora of new attacks and risks facing them in 2022. By combining hardware-enforced software and security features with industry-leading endpoint security services, HP Wolf Security provides defense-in-depth and enhanced protection, privacy, and threat intelligence, gathering data at the endpoint to help protect the business at large.
Contrary to popular belief, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools slowed down experienced software developers when they were working in codebases familiar to them, rather than supercharging their work, a new study found.
AI research nonprofit METR conducted the in-depth study, on a group of seasoned developers earlier this year while they used Cursor, a popular AI coding assistant, to help them complete tasks in open-source projects they were familiar with.
Before the study, the open-source developers believed using AI would speed them up, estimating it would decrease task completion time by 24%. Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%.
The study’s lead authors, Joel Becker and Nate Rush, said they were shocked by the results: prior to the study, Rush had written down that he expected “a 2x speed up, somewhat obviously.”
The findings challenge the belief that AI always makes expensive human engineers much more productive, a factor that has attracted substantial investment into companies selling AI products to aid software development.
AI is also expected to replace entry-level coding positions. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recently told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years.
Prior literature on productivity improvements has found significant gains: one study found using AI sped up coders by 56%, another study found developers were able to complete 26% more tasks in a given time.
But the new METR study shows that those gains don’t apply to all software development scenarios. In particular, this study showed that experienced developers intimately familiar with the quirks and requirements of large, established open source codebases experienced a slowdown.
Other studies often rely on software development benchmarks for AI, which sometimes misrepresent real-world tasks, the study’s authors said.
The slowdown stemmed from developers needing to spend time going over and correcting what the AI models suggested.
“When we watched the videos, we found that the AIs made some suggestions about their work, and the suggestions were often directionally correct, but not exactly what’s needed,” Becker said.
The authors cautioned that they do not expect the slowdown to apply in other scenarios, such as for junior engineers or engineers working in codebases they aren’t familiar with.
Still, the majority of the study’s participants, as well as the study’s authors, continue to use Cursor today.
The authors believe it is because AI makes the development experience easier, and in turn, more pleasant, akin to editing an essay instead of staring at a blank page.
“Developers have goals other than completing the task as soon as possible,” Becker said. “So they’re going with this less effortful route.”
Kaspersky GReAT (Global Research and Analysis Team) experts have discovered open-source packages that download the Quasar backdoor and a stealer designed to exfiltrate cryptocurrency. The malicious packages are intended for the Cursor AI development environment, which is based on Visual Studio Code — a tool used for AI-assisted coding.
The malicious open-source packages are extensions hosted in the Open VSX repository that claim to provide support for the Solidity programming language. However, in practice, they download and execute malicious code on users’ devices.
During an incident response, a blockchain developer from Russia reached out to Kaspersky after installing one of these fake extensions on his computer, which allowed attackers to steal approximately $500,000 worth of crypto assets.
The threat actor behind these packages managed to deceive the developer by making the malicious package rank higher than the legitimate one. The attacker achieved this by artificially inflating the malicious package’s downloads count to 54,000.
After installation, the victim gained no actual functionality from the extension. Instead, malicious ScreenConnect software was installed on the computer, granting threat actors remote access to the infected device.
Using this access, they deployed the open-source Quasar backdoor along with a stealer that collects data from browsers, email clients, and crypto wallets. With these tools, the threat actors were able to obtain the developer’s wallet seed phrases and subsequently steal cryptocurrency from the accounts.
After the malicious extension downloaded by the developer was discovered and removed from the repository, the threat actor republished it and artificially inflated its installation count to a higher number – 2 million, compared to 61,000 for the legitimate package. The extension was removed from the platform following a request from Kaspersky.
“Spotting compromised open-source packages with the naked eye is becoming increasingly difficult. Threat actors are using increasingly creative tactics to deceive potential victims, even developers who have a strong understanding of cybersecurity risks — particularly those working in the blockchain development field.
As we expect adversaries to continue targeting developers, it is recommended that even experienced IT professionals deploy dedicated security solutions to safeguard sensitive data and prevent financial losses,” commented Georgy Kucherin, Security Researcher with Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team.
The threat actor behind the attack published not only malicious Solidity extensions but also another NPM package, solsafe, which also downloads ScreenConnect. A few months earlier, three additional malicious Visual Studio Code extensions were released — solaibot, among-eth, and blankebesxstnion — all of them have already been removed from the repository.
Kashifu Inuwa CCIE, the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), has reaffirmed the Federal Government’s unwavering commitment to achieving 95% digital literacy across Nigeria by the year 2030, with an ambitious milestone of 70% by 2027.
This disclosure was made in total alignment with the present administration’s priority areas of reforming the economy for sustained inclusive growth and accelerating diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation.
Making this known during a collaborative meeting hosted by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Inuwa highlighted the government’s strategic prioritisation of human capital development as central to its national transformation agenda.
“We started this journey in 2023 when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came on board and he made it clear that economic diversification and inclusivity are part of the administration’s agenda,” he noted.
“And the president outlined this in 8 priority areas to achieve the vision, with priority number 7 specifically focused on accelerating industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing, and innovation,” he added.
Recognising the importance of digital fluency in achieving this agenda, he stated that NITDA is committed to investing in the digital empowerment of citizens through the development of the National Digital Literacy Framework (NDLF), a strategic blueprint aligned with international best practices.
He added that to tailor the framework to Nigeria’s specific needs, 6 core competency areas were incorporated to include device and software operations, information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, safety, and problem solving.
He explained that the framework would address all levels of digital fluency, from basic, intermediate to advanced levels, to make digital skills accessible to every Nigerian, from primary school pupils to working professionals.
According to Inuwa, despite data limitations, NITDA estimates that Nigeria’s digital literacy rate currently stands at 50%, up from 44% in 2021, based on extrapolations from the World Bank’s Better Life Report.
The NITDA DG disclosed that the agency has been working closely with the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in developing a curriculum for digital literacy, which can be infused into formal education. Stating that the visit is a continuation of NITDA’s ongoing engagements with key education stakeholders, including the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission (NUC), and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), all aimed at advancing digital literacy across all levels of learning.
Inuwa also revealed ongoing collaborations with global platforms such as Coursera to train teachers using AI-powered lesson generation tools and provide scalable online training.
It is worth recalling that late last year, NITDA partnered with the Nasarawa State University in collaboration with CISCO in launching the Digital Learning for NSUK (DL4NSUK) initiative to enhance digital literacy in tertiary institutions, and equipping graduates with the skills needed to be digitally proficient and globally competitive.
While stressing that the entire process, from curriculum development to classroom delivery, would require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, Inuwa said, “This is not a journey we can walk alone; we must bring everyone on board, education stakeholders, technology providers, state governments, and international partners.”
In response to the DG’s remarks, UBEC Executive Secretary, Hajiya Aisha Garba, confirmed that the Commission has officially received the digital literacy curriculum developed by NITDA and NERDC and has commenced internal review processes.
She acknowledged the curriculum as robust and forward-looking but stressed the need for simplification to suit early learners and teachers, citing challenges such as curriculum overload, limited teacher capacity, and inadequate infrastructure as key barriers to effective implementation.
She pledged that UBEC, in partnership with the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), will lead efforts to equip schools with computers and solar-powered infrastructure to support real learning.
“We’re committed to working with NITDA and NERDC to refine the curriculum, train teachers, and ensure effective delivery. Let us align the technical vision with grassroots realities to make a lasting impact,” she concluded.
To formalise the implementation of the meeting’s resolutions, a joint inter-agency committee was established to develop strategic plans that will ensure the effective rollout of the digital literacy initiative, to equip young Nigerians with the essential digital skills required to thrive in an increasingly dynamic and technology-driven global landscape.
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